Maybe I've missed an explanation, but could you talk more about why newspapers even bother to endorse candidates in the first place? Is that something I should be paying attention to? Does it mean something? I just don't know much about this topic and the practice seems kind of strange!

Sure. In the U.S., newspapers started as a means of communication for political parties. That's how they got their message out in an era when there weren't other technologies. So, naturally, the Whig newspaper would have supported the Whig candidate. Then, as papers became actually about news, papers started endorsing candidates as a way to give their readers guidance on how to vote. In a world without the infinite information sources we have now, who would you trust to tell you for whom to vote? For many people, the answer was "the newspaper editors" who were generally more educated and more aware of political issues than the general population at the time.

Part of it is also a throwback to the time when most cities had two papers, one more liberal and one conservative, so they would naturally support the candidate of their party. You still see this in a few places, Chicago has the Tribune and the Sun. The Tribune is historically Republican; they basically launched Abraham Lincoln's career, and they've never endorsed a Democrat until this year.

Now it's kindof meaningless, but candidates still like to get as many endorsements as they can. It's also a decent predictor of the way the election will go. In 2004, newspaper endorsements were almost dead even with a slight edge to Bush, just like the vote ended up being.